I'm in Seoul. I was here for the World Cup. It was very amazing. I watched the game with up to a million people along one of the major streets here. And then roamed around to help Korea celebrate. I went out for beers and dinner with one of the NCSoft workers (NiceBrain) and some of his college friends. I had a great time. This memory is something that will stay with me forever.

I am over in Seoul working with NCSoft to launch EverQuest in Korea. Their first closed beta launch is scheduled for next Tuesday. Time is running out and they are scrambling to finish everything. Many things remain to be done but many of them are strange quirks.

One of the strangest hurdles right now is that the Korean government has announced that Tuesday will be a national holiday if the Korean team wins its World Cup match on Saturday -- they would play either the US or Germany on Tuesday. Will NCSoft continue to launch on Tuesday anyway? Will the volume be enough for a valid test? What will I do if they shift the launch to Wednesday as I am scheduled to fly out at 3pm?

One item at a time... And I'll worry about next week after the soccer game tomorrow.

They won the round of 16 match against Italy in a spectacular fashion - goal in the 88th minute and a Golden Goal to win it. The US may have to play the Red Devils again if we can beat Germany and Korea beats Spain.

And I may be in Korea for the game. It looks like I will be flying out either today or tomorrow for my second business excursion for NCSoft. I should have anticipated being needed. I didn't. I won't put up too much of a fuss. However, it will be a hectic bit of time to get ready.

And if that wasn't enough excitement, our water is not working due to the sewer repairs on Del Mar Ave. The water department forgot to hook us up to the temporary source. It wasn't a sinister plot, rather our water box was hidden underneath some plants so we were just overlooked. I didn't shower on Monday because the water went off at 8:30. And Sophia noticed that everyone else had water last night when she got home but the crews must have already gone home because even though we were told that we were third in line to get service, no one helped restore our H20. This morning though, the crews will hopefully get around to it, especially because I may need to get some laundry done.

I'm not sure what it is but today I am grumpy. The dogs next door are barking too loud, TiVo didn't record soccer overnight and didn't record the replay long enough for the Irish-Spanish penalty kicks. Sophia is making too much noise or isn't guessing the details of what I need. I can't seem to get anything right. I don't want to go to work tomorrow or really any day of the week. Grumpy for sure. Wish I could say why - so I could fix it.

The EQ Invasion web page didn't go out yesterday -- too little time to put together something that cool in a single day. I expect it to go live Tuesday. The first event is on Thursday. My contribution was the calendar system. It takes in XML events and displays them in a calendar. The calendar can search for cities (and soon any parameter). It can go to any date. It can scroll ahead and back. It can...

We'll probably paint the entire bedroom purple today. And chop up the dead tree in the backyard. And... But the real fun will be working on our personal web pages. You may get to see the calendar in action.

I'm not too motivated. Work has me bored. There is going to be another trip to Korea. Maybe I should get the first photos online? So much to do. So why am I writing about it. I should be doing it. Cheers!

The US advanced to the second round of the World Cup thanks to Korea winning. Down to 16 teams. My predictions:
German over Paraguay.
Denmark over England.
Sweden over Senegal
Spain over Ireland
Mexico over US
Brazil over Belgium
Turkey over Japan
Italy over South Korea.

Not me, the cat. Brenda lost her 15 year old cat to kidney disease last week. Sophia was housesitting Bob for one of our first dates. I brought fresh bread and wine for a pasta dinner. Bob was very cute and affectionate. He had a very strange purr that sounded more like a crackle. He liked drinking the water from the shower -- and demanded this even if you weren't going to shower. Thanks Bob!

The effect of putting the text someplace public, even if there is little chance of it actually being read, has altered the content. I am the writer and also the editor and censor. There are probably at least two reactions to making a public journal: an exhibitionist - freely writing down everything, conservative - carefully wording the tricky situations. Obviously there are grey areas between. And the content and intent of the blog will also influence how often the occasion arises for the censors to make suggestions.

The end result - I need to decide if I am willing to have someone from work or a friend read this and find some content about them that may not be the most positive, or in fact quite negative. I also need to decide the tone and intent of this blog - perhaps I need a private one for personal rants and this public one for discussing the life of a game programmer, the life of living in OB, the life of the Lead Cat at Mount Abbey...

Lakers are up 3-0 on the NJ Nets. Who knows about the hockey series. USA tied Korea in the World Cup. Both teams will advance with a tie or better in their matches next week. US will advance with a Korean win. Korea will advance with a US loss.

The wrong technical decision was made today. However, it was probably the only decision that was going to be made. Wouldn't it be nice to work in an egoless environment. And thus the platform group, and in particular MrBobble, gets to scramble.

My neck/shoulder has been very stiff the last few days -- even causing sleepless nights. The chiropractor has but me back into order. Let's hope. Enough for now...

I don't have an excuse for not writing the last couple of days. The new computer. Last minute chores before Sophia returned. World Cup on TiVo in the morning and after work. A new Palm to distract me. Playing with the cats. A late night at work.

The US soccer team beat Portugal this morning 3-2. The game was excellent and I didn't realize how much I wanted the US to win until I felt extremely nervous the second half as they basically went into a defensive shell and deflected attack after attack. I tried to do the math on all possible variations in a round-robin tournament with 4 teams, Win-Loss-Tie. The team names don't matter. Just the results. I won't include the whole thing here...

I went out with Tish and Trina to try to watch Tom on the marathon. He did a great job and so we missed him someplace near the halfway mark. And we guessed he must have been going slower... Also running today was another friend James and 16K other people.

The mailman delivered my new computer "Dell on Del Mar" -- or officially Ocean.MountAbbey.com at 9am. I spent much of the day playing around and trying to figure out how to get the CD-RW drive to work as a backup devices. Ends up the CDs need to be formatted... WindowsXP is pretty slick. I got it to hang -- EverQuest Trilogy install. I want to change the Welcome Screen background image. I think it will handle the cool things I want to customize. Multiple users will be nice.Lots to learn. It is a fine addition.

The best part may be the flat panel monitor. It runs the same resolution as my old screen (1280x1024). Crisp. Nice text. bright. Dual input so when I decide to move the first monitor downstairs (except then I won't be able to solo two characters at once in EverQuest.) I consider it a luxury item. But a nice item.

Tomorrow I hang out with Tish in the morning for the Rock'n'Roll marathon. Tom is running. Then I come home to sports - World Cup soccer and NBA game 7. Saw the Denmark/Uruguay match this morning. Soccer can be a graceful game. The players showed some fine sportsmanship but I also saw the egos (yelling at refs.) And I really need to start preparing for Sophia's return.